Chapter Text
There was something about Ithelia’s prison that was strikingly familiar, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. It wasn’t anything like Apocrypha, that was for sure.
The sky above was a vast expanse of stars wreathed with twisting threads of light and housed the vast shadowed forms of crystalline dragons and jagged spheres of mirror shards. Amidst the sandy dunes were scattered ruins of arches and towers, long left to decay, and at the centre was a great stone throne, now left vacant by Ithelia’s escape. At the foot of the throne lay the shattered remains of the crystal dome that had encompassed its occupant, and as he traced the pads of his fingers over the surface, they came away with a fine, glittering sand.
Orion stared at the miniscule grains and shards that gripped to his fingers, both mesmerised and infuriated in how he couldn’t place where he’d encountered them before. It was like an itch at the back of his skull, half-remembered and relentless in its pestering. Was this what Torvesard had endured for all these centuries? Searching for something half-remembered but was always just out of reach? Suddenly his drive to uncover the lost memory of his Prince was easy to empathise with. He was half-tempted to go and scour the Aubris until he found the place he was thinking of.
“I had hoped to avoid this moment, but fate takes little account of mortal hopes as it chooses its course,” Leramil was saying to Kyriel a ways behind him, as calm and collected as ever. “Let us see what the One Who Knows can tell us about these events.”
Events. Right. Ithelia’s escape was supposed to herald the unravelling of reality. And with her gone, vanished without a trace even to her own scion, there was no way they’d find her before they could prevent that. By Mora’s own admission, they had already lost.
That was, of course, if he was telling the truth.
“Orri?” Kyriel called to him. “It’s time to go.”
He felt the bite of fragmented glass digging into the tip of his fingers as he turned to join her and the others as they left the prison. As they approached the towering spire that stood between them and the Mythos, he paused to glance back at the throne.
If Ithelia’s escape really marked the unravelling of reality, then why wasn’t it over already? Surely this place ought to be crumbling into nothingness by now, as the epicentre of such calamitous tidings. Orion did not share Leramil’s talent for perceiving the threads of fate, but his years of tutelage with her and Azandar before her had lent him a sense for the fabric of reality, like an impossibly sheer veil running beneath his fingers.
If reality were coming undone, he’d expect to feel the threads running away from him, pulling loose of their stitches like when a stray thread caught on a nail, unnoticed at first until the garment was half-gone. Instead he felt… nothing.
No, not nothing he realised. Something had changed, just not in the way he’d expected. Instead of the pulling apart of seams or runaway threads, it was as though the tapestry had been beaten clean. Ripples cascaded through the fabric and as the dust fell away, the intricacies of the forgotten stitchwork was revealed. He could now feel the joins, the places where holes had been stitched shut to form a seamless continuity that, before this moment, had simply appeared seamless by nature as opposed to being by design.
In this place, reality was embroidered and embossed with elegant stitches and unparalleled sophistication, and in that moment, the growing notion of doubt coalesced into a bristled understanding.
When Orion passed back through the silvery veil of shimmering light, he emerged once more into the Mythos on the heels of his companions. The secret archive seemed no worse off for the escape of its prisoner, with its myriad of Watchers and Seekers continuing to attend to their duties as if no terrible happenings had transpired at all. And as before, Mora was awaiting them. Or more specifically, he awaited Kyriel.
“I am called the Master of the Tides of Fate. I perceive everything that may come to pass. Yet I cannot select the outcomes I prefer,” Mora lamented. “Choice and chance determine which possibility actually occurs. Such as this one. Ithelia is free.”
The previous disquiet settled over the group, the weight of their failure falling so much heavier with Mora’s confirmation. But Kyriel frowned at the eldritch mass of eyeballs and tentacles and eyed him with the same suspicion that had crawled its way into Orion’s chest. He wasn’t the only one who had his doubts about all of this. Good.
“You said that if Torvesard succeeded, reality would end, yet existence seems to be carrying on as before,” she pointed out accusingly. “If you’ve been lying to us all this time, I-”
"I did not lie, Chosen of Fate!” Mora snapped. “Nor was I mistaken. I told you what you needed to know to avert catastrophe, and catastrophe has been averted … for now. The outcome I foresaw will still come to pass. It is only a matter of time.”
Orion snorted. All eyes - even Mora’s - turned his way. Only then did he realise what he had done.
“Did you have something to say, Arcanist?” the Prince asked with a false air of decorum that barely disguised the menace behind the words.
A man unused to attention, Orion felt a sudden and familiar discomfort curdling in the pit of his stomach. But he swallowed down the fear and compelled his heart to quiet. He stood back straight, met Mora’s eye and hoped that no one could see him shaking.
“You say that we averted catastrophe. I’m just curious as to how, considering we’ve been a step behind Torvesard all day,” he said, mustering all his will to keep his voice steady. “We’ve achieved quite literally nothing. Torvesard has Abolisher and Ithelia’s gone. How does our witnessing that qualify as preventing catastrophe?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Leramil looked as though he’d slapped her around the face. He pressed on regardless.
“In fact, at the beginning of all this you told my sister that just the memory itself being remembered would unravel reality. Now Ithelia’s free and reality is still intact, meaning that it all comes back to something she might do, just like the last time you erased her.” The mere thought saw his temper rising, the anger drowning out the fear. “You keep changing the story and expect us to keep believing you, as if you think we’ll all keep on being blind to what this is all really about.”
The silence was deafening as Mora leaned in (so to speak) to tower over him, and the Prince’s rage seemed to saturate the molecules of the very air, perforating his lungs and seeping into his bones, yet he stood firm even as some animal part of him wanted to run as far from Mora as he possibly could.
“And what is this all about, Orinthion Rilis?”
Mora had no teeth with which to grit, but if he did, he was spitting that name through them. As if an old name from an old life were a knife that could cut him down to size and put him back in his place.
But despite the way his insides were all clenched in fear, he straightened his back and said, “that you wanted to be rid of a powerful rival, and this one possibility was all the pretense you needed to get the other Princes on your side.”
His fists curled so tight that his knuckles blanched and the tiny shards pierced the pads of his fingers, wet beads of crimson pooling just below the surface. “But Vaermina and Peryite saw through you back then, and they knew you well enough to see through you again. Just as I see through you now, Gardener of Men.”
“Orion!”
Leramil’s voice was hushed, her face stricken and even paler than usual. But even if he wanted to take back what he said, it was too late. Mora had him by the throat.
The tentacle seemed to be toying between letting him dangle a foot off of the ground as it slowly crushed his windpipe or just snapping his neck with a lazy flick and being done with it. With bloodied fingers he scrabbled to relieve the dizzying pressure, slick digits pushing jagged sand into the slimy, undulating rope of muscle that now held his life in its iron grip, but he refused to look away from Mora’s furious gaze and scowled back into the great unblinking eye.
“Do you not recall the futility of the mortal mind?” Mora hissed as he flexed his grip that little bit harder. “You cannot even begin to comprehend the intricacies of your own existence, much less that of all reality! You may glimpse behind the curtain, Arcanist, but that does not grant you understanding of the infinite permutations of causality, or the caution that must be entreated to navigate its endless branches to avert a disaster that would render all reality to nothingness! Your hopelessly limited perceptions cannot even begin to fathom that which I would guard us from!”
Orion choked, gasping for the air to retort but Mora gripped tighter. Black spots bloomed in his vision as his lungs screamed. Every fibre of his being screamed for escape, for relief as the very real fear of death descended upon him, blanketing his nerves in its iron hold.
He was vaguely aware of his companions and their horror. Cultists they could fight. Shelreni, Blightcrown, even Vaermina herself - they’d fought them all together - but in the shadow of Mora, with no means to tip the scales, they were helpless to do anything but watch-
“Let him go, Mora!”
Clarity cut through the choking darkness and impending doom halted as abruptly as it had arrived, as if the very tides of the ocean had ceased to flow and the roaring wind died with a whisper with only a single command.
His heart leapt into his throat.
“Kyri-” He gasped but Mora’s hold squeezed to choke out the sound as he turned his attention to his Chosen. His expression - if you could call it that - was inscrutable as ever, some of his many eyes narrowed, others wide with shock, and some bearing a sparkle of intrigue, but the core of his being, the glistening Great Eye, could only be described as passive. Indifferent. But not Kyriel, who stared him down defiantly as if she were his equal.
“We signed a contract,” she said, her staff crackling with violet thunder and haloed by crystal shards charged with fresh magicka. “You hurt my brother and that contract will be void.”
A beat passed.
“Our terms of our contract specifies th-”
“My aid in preserving Nirn and Apocrypha in return for you never forcing me to act against my own interests,” she interrupted brusquely, just like she did when their old school teacher tried to explain a concept to her like she were a dullard, only for her to skewer them with a sharp rebuttal. “Having to stand by and watch you kill my brother because you’ve decided to throw a tantrum is being forced to go against my interests. Now let him go or we’ll find out what happens when a Daedric Prince is the one who violates the terms of their own contract. And if the outcome is nothing, then we’ll know for a fact that my brother is right not to trust your word.”
For a long moment it seemed that Mora was flabbergasted by her audacity, and Orion just had to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Leave it to Kyri to bully a Daedric Prince in his own realm; a realm whose continued existence was owed to her when she wielded the power of the Black Book to expel Vaermina back to Quagmire. She’d proven her indisputable worth to the Prince of Fate too many times for him to simply toss her aside, especially now that Ithelia was free, and she knew that replacing her at this stage was simply not feasible.
And Mora must have known it too, because his grip on Orion vanished and he hit the ground in a heap.
Kyriel was the first by his side, grabbing him under the arms and levering him up to stand. Her fingers probed his neck for any immediate damage only to find a rope-like impression where the tentacle had held him, blossoming with bruises.
Satisfied that he wasn’t in danger of suffocating, she turned her attention to his bloodied fingers and wrapped her own over them. Some described healing magic as a warm blanketing sensation, but Kyriel’s was like hot needles digging at his skin, spearing the damage and knitting the flesh back together. When she was done, the only evidence left of any injury was a drying smear of blood.
He’d gotten lucky. Most who defied the Demon of Knowledge couldn’t boast of getting away with so little. He was sure that it would come back to bite him some day. Today, however, he’d had enough.
He massaged his throat with one hand and gently pushed his sister’s away with the other as he turned - staggered, really - away from her and Mora and the rest.
“Orri?”
“I’m going to find Ithelia,” he choked, his windpipe feeling swollen and sore. “If he won’t tell us the truth, then I’ll find it myself.”
He drew on his magicka and conjured up a portal. Where it led, he only knew vaguely, which was a very cavalier and admittedly dangerous approach to magical translocation, but it was hard to care right now. Mora’s reprisal had only confirmed what he’d come to believe; whether Ithelia’s imprisonment was justified or not was irrelevant. Mora’s first and foremost concern was his own interests, nothing more and nothing less.
There was no telling if Ithelia would be any more honest about the matter or that she’d even be in her right mind. She was a Daedric Prince, one who’d spent an unfathomable amount of time locked away and forgotten about. Princes were manipulative creatures by nature, and there was no way to know what damage had been done by her prolonged isolation. A mortal would go mad, but a daedra? He had no idea. He just had to find her. Once he did that… well. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
If Kyriel could still understand him the way she had when they were young, then the limited explanation would be sufficient for her.
“Orion,” Leramil hissed worriedly. “If you do this-”
“Then Fate’s Chosen will no doubt clean up the mess.”
He didn’t mean for it to come off so coldly, but he was tired and aching and he was ready to be done with Apocrypha.
He shouldn’t have been surprised that Azandar joined him at the portal, but he’d almost expected that he’d prefer to follow Fate’s Chosen onher journey to increase his choice of research opportunities given how the threads of fate wove themselves around her, so it was a welcome surprise to find his former mentor at his side.
No one tried to stop them from departing, and barely moments later, Orion stepped out onto the glassy sands on the outskirts of Fargrave. He stared in wonder, not for the first time, at the ancient city nestled in the vast glittering dunes that stretched on seemingly without end, but now for a reason besides the giant skeletons and infinite wonders of its markets.
He now knew where he’d seen Ithelia’s prison before.